How does one work out how many eggs a hen lays in a year? I don't have the time or inclination to use a trap nest. I can't always tell which bird has laid which egg and would like to find some way of keeping track.

The reason? - I want to try and get the egg laying capabilities of my welbars and wybars up by introducing new blood from good quality birds.

You can do trap nesting Squizzers but that is quite a pain, not that I've done it :o

So I would count every egg that is laid and divide it between how many are in the run to get an average. Preferably you want the people with the bantam Welsummers and Wyandottes to trap nest because it will be those birds that dictate the future egg numbers.

The Wybars should be better layers than the Welbars, simply because of the egg colour

I had the same need to know which of my hens were laying and tried all sorts of daft things. I got some agricultural crayon which I think is used to mark sheep and put that in the nest. The idea being that the hen would sit and get a bit of the crayon colour on her. That way I would know roughly who was laying. It did sort of work though as I was testing this in winter the crayon was not very sticky and did not mark very well so I had to really search for the colour.

Hi all, the only way you can get a rough figure is to get the average of the birds that you have in the pen, I Have had your problem in the past of trying to find new lines or find new gold parent lines i.e. RIR for rhobars etc, with the rarer types i.e welbars and wybars my advice to you is; the the gold lines are so poor now, because there bred for show and not for utillity, dont bother! start from scratch and recreate your own using one of the commercial lines of Barred plymouth rocks, that way you can use the gold types avalible to you and the barreds will give you the laying ability. N-T

[quote name='nest-trapper']Hi all, the only way you can get a rough figure is to get the average of the birds that you have in the pen, I Have had your problem in the past of trying to find new lines or find new gold parent lines i.e. RIR for rhobars etc, with the rarer types i.e welbars and wybars my advice to you is; the the gold lines are so poor now, because there bred for show and not for utillity, dont bother! start from scratch and recreate your own using one of the commercial lines of Barred plymouth rocks, that way you can use the gold types avalible to you and the barreds will give you the laying ability. N-T[/QUOTE]

Thanks for your input - appreciated! Will look into getting some hatching eggs for the barred plymouth rocks.

[quote name='Squizzers']Thanks for your input - appreciated! Will look into getting some hatching eggs for the barred plymouth rocks.[/QUOTE]

IF you look more towards to hybrid industry you can find lines that will lay between 270 to 290 in the pullet year, these are the kiddies you want, but be warned you have to search for them, you wont find birds like this on Ebay!!

Who was the guy in Shropshire whe had a closed flock of White Wyandottes ( I guess he's dead now) but I'm sure he had a similar flock of commercial rhodes... Maybe his son/daughter carried on ... THink it was Clem shaw - god, it's all coming back to me <img src='http://poultrychat.com/oldforumIcons/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' /> He used to sell to the public.

Who was the guy in Shropshire whe had a closed flock of White Wyandottes ( I guess he's dead now) but I'm sure he had a similar flock of commercial rhodes... Maybe his son/daughter carried on ... THink it was Clem shaw - god, it's all coming back to me <img src='http://poultrychat.com/oldforumIcons/style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' /> He used to sell to the public.

Nick

oh btw Hello Squizz, hows things and I'm back !!!

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Nick, The fellow you are talking about was a good friend of mine Clements Shaw of Morville Heath, Bridgenorth. Clem died about 15 years ago but Graham Smith continues the business at the heath, He keeps utility RIR, white whyandottes, black, white, blue, brown Leghorns and Jersey giants.

I think when the wybars and welbars were first created there were better laying lines of wyandottes than welsumers, but with the modern produced ones I think the welbars are better as more people have a interest in welsumers that wyandottes these days.